National Data | Inconvenient Truth re U.K.`s Immigrants

A TV newsman defends his racially explicit analysis of the economic impact of immigration:

“Most people will be pleased that somebody is prepared to look at the facts. Immigration is a major development of our time. It is a healthy thing to know where it benefits and where it hinders our society.”

Only 19 percent of working age Somalis are employed. Ten percent of this group are unemployed (i.e., looking for work) while a whopping 71 percent are out of the labor force entirely (i.e., not even looking.) [Table 1.] By contrast, 78% of UK natives are employed;4% unemployed; 18% not in the labor force.

At the other extreme more than 85 percent of working age immigrants from Australia, France, Canada, and Poland are employed and less than 13 percent are not in the labor force.

Our question: how do they know work is hard to find when so many aren`t even looking?

Somali immigrants also top the IPPR housing table—with 80 percent living in subsidized public housing. The next highest group is Turkish immigrants, at 49 percent. Immigrants from Australia, France, and the U.S. are the least likely to be in public housing—at 5 percent. Seventeen percent of U.K. natives live in public housing.

Our immigrants are significantly more dependent and—thanks to the Mexicans—constitute a larger share of our population than their counterparts in the U.K. In fact, most U.K. immigrant groups have lower dependency rates than U.K. natives. [Table 2.] Of the groups with higher dependency rates, many are disproportionately refugees (e.g., the Somalis and Turkish-born) or are naturalized citizens (e.g., the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.)

Implication: The British are doing a better job of vetting public charges out of their immigrant influx than we are. (They get fewer illegals, because the English Channel is wider and deeper than the Rio Grande.)

The U.K.`s system of universal health care is available, well, universally—to immigrant and native, rich and poor. Had IPPR counted national health care as a welfare benefit, the dependency gap between U.K. and U.S. immigrants would narrow, or even reverse. The economic burden of U.K. immigration would appear even larger than portrayed in the IPPR report.